


Threads

by Medeafic



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-18
Updated: 2010-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:49:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medeafic/pseuds/Medeafic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris has an obsession.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threads

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Нити](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1208962) by [littledoctor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledoctor/pseuds/littledoctor)



> Written for the Trek RPF Christmas Exchange 2010, originally posted there as a gift for old_blueeyes. Prompt: Silk ties. This fic is set during the Trek Cast World Tour - warnings for light bondage and stalkery behavior. Thank you as always to my brilliant and charming beta emmessann, and to the delightful zjofierose who read it over for me.

“Oi, _mate_! What do you think you’re doing?” Karl gapes at Chris and pulls away, watching in horror as Chris continues tugging at a loose silk thread from his silver-gray tie. “This tie is on _loan_ you know, like yours. Specially chosen for me by that evil stylist.”

“I know,” Chris says calmly. “If _you’d_ chosen it, it’d have ducks all over it, or a half-naked hula girl sitting under a palm tree.” He eases the thread out and rubs a thumbnail over the weave to smooth it. “Perfect. See? No need for ‘Ois’ or ‘mates’ or freak-outs. I’ve saved you from further disaster.”

“Disaster?”

“You get a loose thread like that caught on something, it’ll pull out all weird and ruin the tie. This is what Zach tells me, anyway. And I trust him on that kind of thing.”

“Still feel like a bloody clown.” Karl is getting his grumble-face on. Chris understands. It’s not that Karl is fashion-awkward, it’s just that his personal style leans more towards casual shirts and jeans.

Chris tweaks his nose. “Cheer up. I’ll hold your hand if you want.”

Karl throws his head back and laughs, and Chris chalks up another win on his internal scoreboard. Making Karl laugh like that, with most of his teeth on display and his eyes squeezed tight, is a daily goal for Chris. He has other goals, but none of them are things he’d admit to. He feels guilty enough as it is.

“Where’s Cho? And Eyebrows? And Zoë? And everyone?” Karl fidgets with his cufflinks, and Chris has to force himself not to put a calming hand over his fingers. Karl has hands exactly as Chris thinks they should be – large, heavy and surprisingly elegant, with long, thick, round-tipped fingers and a heart tattoo for his wife on the knuckle of his ring finger.

“Zoë’s in make up. John is stuffing his face. And Zach is…I don’t know where Zach is.” Chris absently winds the silvery thread around his index finger and puts it safely in his pocket.

“I’m right here,” Zach says from the doorway, and both Karl and Chris jump. “Nice tie maintenance, Pine. Looking good, Karl.”

At the next event, Chris’s hangnail catches on Karl’s red silk tie. Karl bounces impatiently on the spot as Chris calmly extracts the thread.

“You look like you’re doing a constricted version of the Snoopy dance,” Chris observes.

“Go constrict yourself,” Karl growls. “Why do you keep ripping my clothes to shreds, anyway? Can’t control your raging lust for me?”

Karl is kidding, but Chris feels his face warm. “Just hold _still_. Okay. Fixed.”

“Cut your bloody nails next time.”

“Will do.”

Later that night, lying on the bed in another anonymous hotel room, Chris extracts the silver thread from his wallet. He winds it together with the red, rolling them between his fingers until they’re intertwined, and then wraps them into a neat circle over his index finger. He puts the threads carefully back into his wallet, and tries to find sleep.

  
***

  
“Pine, _what_ in the _fuck_ –”

“It wasn’t me this time!”

“I can’t even _see_ a loose thread, are you _sure_ –”

“I’m sure,” Chris says brusquely. He hopes no one noticed him earlier, picking away delicately at the gold silk tie in the dressing room, hanging with Karl’s suit. “There. See?” He draws forth the golden thread like he’s embroidering a King’s raiment. “Perfect. You’ll be perfect for the fans.”

Karl sighs. “Is this bad luck? Do you think I’ve somehow offended the Couture Gods, and they’re getting back at me in this really petty and annoying way? Maybe we should ask Zach. He’d probably know the right sacrifice to make to appease them.”

“A virgin twink,” Chris suggests. He’s rewarded by Karl’s laugh again, and takes the moment to slip the thread into his pocket. Later, alone in his hotel room with the television on mute, he weaves it into the other threads. This time, when he winds the threads into a circle, he does it around his ring finger. He rolls it up over his knuckle to take it off, and the threads stay as they are, a silken circle. Chris wonders what it would look like on Karl’s finger, below the heart tattoo representing his marriage.

“You are a terrible human being,” he says aloud. “You have to stop doing this.” He pulls apart the circle and replaces the threads in his wallet.

He’s always been respectful of Karl and of his wife. Natalie is lovely, of course, and funny, and he would never, _could_ never do anything to jeopardize their relationship, and it’s not like Karl would either, but Chris doesn’t want to be a source of temptation, even in the most abstract way. Zach tells him that he thinks Karl is bi, and although Chris thinks it’s unlikely, he’s mindful of the fact. But Zach thinks everyone is bi. Most people are, for Zach.

Zach also likes Karl, but Chris can find no real reason to be jealous about it. There is absolutely no possibility that anything would happen between them, because Karl is married and he loves his wife and he is a fine, upright, gentlemanly guy who would never cheat. Never. Not with Zach, and certainly not with Chris.

Lying there in the cold, too-large bed, hands behind his head, staring at nothing, Chris decides to keep respecting Karl.

And to try to stop taking threads from his silk ties.

  
***

  
The next tie is traditional black, and Chris can barely wait to get his hands on it. He watches Karl fiddling with it the whole time they wait backstage, his fingers uncertain over the knot but firm when he smoothes it down his shirt. But Chris knows he should bide his time. Zach keeps glancing at him glancing at Karl, and frowning a little. Chris wants to make a face back at him, but settles for a steady gaze and a flicker of tongue over his lips. Zach looks away.

After the premiere, which is only another one in a long line of premieres in different cities, Chris stays close to Karl and ends up watching him change in his room for the after-party. “I’ll take your tie back for you,” he says casually, and it’s as easy as that.

He takes the tie to his room and hides it under his pillow, feeling like he’s doing something furtive and wrong – because it _is_ furtive and wrong. But he’s not honorable enough to stop doing it. Later that night, trying not to think about how _weird_ he is, he blindfolds himself with the tie, over his nose a little too, so he can breathe in Karl’s smell, and pretends that it’s Karl’s hand on his cock instead of his own.

Chris initially felt so guilty about the fantasies he has about Karl that it used to take him forever to come. Repeated efforts have helped him block out the unease, and now he has it down to a fine and speedy art, unless he wants to take his time. And right now – with Karl’s scent filling his nostrils and the image of Karl’s hands filling his mind – he’ll take all the time he needs.

This time, Chris returns to a favorite scenario: Karl is rough with him, demanding and pushing and even hurting him, squeezing into his arm a little too tightly as he pulls off Chris’s clothes and shoves him on to the bed. Karl binds him with silk ties, wrists and ankles so he’s spread-eagled face up. It has to be this way, because if Chris were the one in charge, it wouldn’t be right, even in Fantasy Land. If Karl’s doing it to him, it’s okay.

He’s gone over this so many times that he’s too close too quickly, his cock leaping up to his hand as he reaches for it, and has to back off. Goes for more talking than he usually does.

“I’ve seen you watching me,” Karl would say. “Like you need to be fucked. Am I right?’

“Yeah,” Chris would breathe back, because in his fantasy he’s too hot for Karl to be anywhere near eloquent. “Yeah, I want you to fuck me.”

Normally that’s it for the talking, but Chris needs to draw it out, so he thinks about what Karl would say next.

“What do you want me to do first? You want me to touch that monster cock of yours?” (Because it’s _his_ fantasy, Chris reasons to himself with the small part of his brain that’s not caught up in this, and he _does_ have a big dick, and he _would_ like to hear Karl acknowledge that.)

“Yeah, jack me off a bit,” he’d say, and Karl would flick hard at the head of his cock and laugh a little at the way Chris grunts in pain and pleasure, squirming. “Please?” Another flick, more gentle this time, and then maybe Karl’s thumb and forefinger curling into a circle under the head, tightening up.

Chris is leaking already, drops of pre-come splotching onto his stomach. He shifts his hips on the bed, and grabs his dick tight. It’s Karl’s hand on him. The right hand, tattoo-free.

Karl’s voice. “You want lube?”

No, that’s not right. He wouldn’t have lube with him, even though Chris has some, but even better –

“Spit on me,” Chris would say, and watch Karl work his tongue around, his jaw muscles moving as he sucks up saliva into his mouth and bends over and spits right on his cock like he was – not disgusted – but –

“You fucking filthy little cocktease. You have your hands on me every chance you can get, fiddling with my ties and I know – I _know_ , Pine, you think about my dick when you’re doing that. You think I’m stupid?”

“God, no.”

He’d spit again, right onto the tip of Chris’s cock, and Chris moans as he pictures it collect and drip. He lifts his hand up quickly to his mouth, slicks it with his tongue, back and forth a few times and replaces it, jerking himself rougher than he really likes it, because it’s _Karl_ , and Karl would do it this way.

“Like this?” Karl would ask, raising that one eyebrow like he does. Zach and Karl used to have Quizzical Eyebrow Championships on the set, and Chris always awarded the prize to Karl, even after Zach sulked that it wasn’t fair.

“A little less – not so –” He’s gasping it out to himself, alone in the room, but he’s beyond that now. Karl is there, with him.

“Too bad. This is how it’s gonna go.”

And Chris could swear it’s Karl’s hand, those broad, strong fingers pumping brutally on his dick like it really means something. He’s too close again, and Fantasy Karl says–

“I know you want me in your arse, kid, so don’t get carried away. You don’t get to come until I do.”

Chris really has to stop then for a second, his cock throbbing and frantic, and he turns over on the bed, pulls his knees up, the silk tie sliding on the pillowcase but holding over his eyes. He fast-forwards the fantasy to skip the boring rearrangement bits and pictures his hands tied together, to each other this time. The silk tie binding his wrists would be gentle and cool against his skin, a contrast to Karl’s heavy hands slapping at his thighs until Chris opens them. And Karl would kneel between them, spreading Chris’s butt cheeks open and spitting again, right on his hole, twice, three times.

“It’ll hurt,” Chris says aloud, and Karl’s answer swims up from his subconscious. _You want it to hurt_.

In his fantasy, it’s easier than it would really be. He sucks on his own fingers for a while to get them wetter than Karl’s cock would be before pushing them into his ass relentlessly (no hangnails this time), but Karl wouldn’t prep him anyway, so maybe it hurts about the same as that thick, unseen dick would feel, grinding into him – okay, probably not, but the fantasy holds –

Fantasy Karl fucks Chris hard, harder than he’s ever fucked his wife, because Chris can take it like that and wants it like that. He forces away the twinge of guilt at the edge of his mind, focuses on the sensation instead.

With Karl’s dick in his ass and a hand on his cock, Karl’s or his own doesn’t matter – well, maybe Karl’s – Chris would start making animalistic noises so loud that Fantasy Zach would be banging on the wall to shut him up, because in his daydream, Chris _definitely_ wants Zach to know what’s going on. Wants Zach to know that _he_ got the guy this time, after all those pretty boys Zach’s been bedding on tour and bragging about in that subtle-but-obvious way he has.

And maybe Karl would let Chris suck at his fingers, curling them into Chris’s mouth like he wants to wrench more noises out of him, making cruel threats about what would happen if Chris bites. But Chris would never bite, not on those incredible hands. Or else Karl would hold him down by the back of his neck, pushing Chris’s nose firmly into the pillow and squeezing hard.

Chris replays Karl coming in his ass once, twice, three times, saying dirty, sexy things in his ear before he lets himself shoot finally, jizzing all over the bedspread and _shit_ he should have put down a towel or something but it doesn’t matter now it feels so fucking _good_ and Karl’s voice telling him what a little whore he is for cock, it’s fucking _amazing_ –

His panting breath is the only sound Chris hears in the quiet room. He rubs his face against the pillow until the tie pulls off awkwardly over his head, because he doesn’t want to touch it with his messy hands, and then sits up gingerly. He goes to the bathroom to wipe himself down, washes his hands carefully.

He removes two inky, gossamer lines from the tie before he returns it to the stylist the next day.

“What ties are we wearing tonight?”

“I was thinking of something more casual. Open shirts, probably.” Chris’s distraught face takes her by surprise. “Well, _you_ can wear one if you want?”

“Oh – it’s not me so much, it’s Karl. He loves the formal look. Says he never gets to do it back home much, so…”

“But he’s always complaining. I decided on casual to give him a break. And me, from the whining.”

“He just does that to keep up his laid-back image.” Chris grins and winks. “Trust me. Hey, what about that one, the blue?”

“Look better on you, with those eyes.”

“Green, then? It’d bring out the green in Karl’s eyes. Maybe.”

The stylist shrugs. “If you’re sure he likes it, I guess we could do another night of formal.”

That night, Chris adds a vibrant emerald thread to his circle, and smiles at the memory of Karl’s despairing groans about formal wear.

He thinks he probably has enough now, enough thread to make the circle strong and durable. But it doesn’t stop him adding to it in different cities; a purple thread, and another black, and one multicolored one that Chris thinks was probably not a great style choice for Karl in the end, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he has the threads.

  
***

  
At LAX, he sees Karl off on his flight back to Auckland, back to Natalie and the kids, to his relaxed life and his local projects. Zach wanted to come as well to see Karl off, but Chris told him the wrong time. He’ll call later to apologize, tell Zach that Karl was disappointed but understood.

“So, man,” he says, as they survey the Departures board. “I know the _Lord of the Rings_ guys got tattoos, right? At the end of filming or whatever?”

“Yeah.” Karl is distracted. “What the hell is the difference between Gate 7 and Gate 7A? Why do they have to make this so confusing? I can’t even see my flight here!”

Chris takes his arm and leads him down towards the right end of the terminal. “You’re flying International, Karl. For some reason you wanted me to park near Domestic.”

“Oh. Right. Easy mistake. Your country is not set up for foreigners.”

“Pity we didn’t do anything.”

“What?”

“After _Trek_. Pity we didn’t do anything to remember it by.”

“Christ, look at the time, I’m supposed to be checked in already. Why are we talking about this?”

Chris stops short and pulls them into a small side corridor leading to the men’s bathroom. “Because I really thought we should do something to commemorate _Trek_ , but we all ran out of time I guess, and John said Kerri would kill him if he got ink without discussing it with her first, and Zach, God, well, Zach, he would take forever agreeing to a design, you know what he’s like–” He’s babbling and getting red in the face and Karl is looking more and more confused.

“You want us to go and get matching tattoos? Before my flight?”

“No, of course not.” Chris laughs like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard, desperately. Karl watches him in amazement. “I just – I made you this.” He holds out a silk ring, braided together inexpertly, and tries not to shiver as Karl takes it out of his palm.

“Um. Thanks?”

“It’s from your ties,” Chris explains awkwardly.

“Wow.” Karl is starting to look more enthusiastic. “Hah! Those damn ties. Thanks for your help with them, by the way. Nat approved of your thread-pulling technique when I told her.” Chris flushes to the roots of his hair, but Karl is still examining the ring. “This is fantastic – did you make one for everyone? From bits of their clothes too? Did you have some evil plot to make my ties fray for your thread collection?”

“Hey – we should go. You need to get checked in.”

He grabs Karl’s bag and starts walking. Karl is still talking as they jog on to the moving walkway.

“It fits perfectly.”

Chris realizes with dismay that Karl has put it on his tattooed ring finger. He grabs at Karl’s hand, stares at it, and Karl stares at him.

“Don’t put it on that finger. That place is for Natalie. You should put me on your other hand. I mean – put the ring on the other hand. When you wear it. _If_ you wear it. I mean, you don’t have to…It was dumb, forget it.” He drops Karl’s hand like it’s suddenly burning him. They stride a few feet as the moving walkway ends, on to the next one. Chris blankly eyes an ad for – something. Toothpaste, maybe, or life insurance. Something wholesome and normal and family-oriented, but all he sees is the blonde model’s giant frozen smile.

“The famous Pine eloquence, gone in a haze of weird.” Karl slaps his back, and Chris pulls his gaze abruptly away from the colossal toothy grin. Karl’s eyes are greener than usual today, Chris notices. “Tell you the truth, mate, it’ll probably die an undignified death during a round of cops and robbers, or making sure everyone’s washed before bed. But I’ll wear it till it falls off. I think it’s choice.”

“Choice?”

“Cool.”

“It’s kind of dumb.”

“It’s nice. Having a reminder of my Captain.” He slots it onto his other hand, and Chris breathes out slowly, watching as Karl flexes his fingers, fist open and shut and open and shut. “Comfy. What did you make for Zach?”

“Actually, I stole some ears for him. You know what he’s like about being professional, but the man wanted those ears so badly.”

“Quite the little sneak, you are, Pine. I’ll miss you. Assuming I can actually get on the damn plane. Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

At security, Chris stands by the line, moving with Karl as he inches in line towards the metal detector.

“That’s me,” Karl says, when he reaches it. “See you soon, mate. Keep those light fingers in your pockets. I should’ve too, but I didn’t, so here – present for you, too. Keep it to yourself!” He clasps hands with Chris before stepping through the security checkpoint.

“Will do,” Chris says to no one. He feels something heavy and cold in his clutched palm. He looks into his hand and quickly closes his fingers again, drops it into his pocket.

On the way back through the airport, he fishes in his pocket and brings out the ring Karl gave him, part of his Bones costume and technically contraband from the set. Chris slips it onto his finger. The right hand, because that’s the hand for Karl. The sky outside is hazy as he walks back to the car, but the ring shines as brightly as it ever did when Karl wore it.


End file.
